Trustworthy AI in Julia

The Alan Turing Institute

Patrick Altmeyer

Delft University of Technology

2024-05-08

Introduction

Economist by training, previously Bank of England, currently 3rd year PhD in Trustworthy AI @ TU Delft.

Motivation

Why Trustworthy AI and why in Julia?

  • Opaque AI technologies have entered the public domain with far-reaching stakes.
  • These technologies are here to stay, so at best, we can make them more trustworthy.
  • Julia has an edge:
    • Transparency: most packages are written in pure Julia.
    • Intuitiveness: great Lisp-like support for symbolic computing.
    • Community: welcoming, supportive and diverse (sort of!).
    • Autodiff: top-notch support, which helps with common XAI approaches.

Outline

  • Taija: A brief overview of the Taija ecosystem.
  • Deep Dive: A closer look at some of our core packages.
  • The Journey: “I’ll try out Julia for this PhD”—3 years later.

“Move fast and don’t break things”

“Algorithms don’t listen, nor do they bend”

“We’re fascinated with robots because they are reflections of ourselves.”

Questions?

With thanks to my co-authors Andrew M. Demetriou, Antony Bartlett, and Cynthia C. S. Liem and to the audience for their attention.

References

Quote sources

  • “There! It’s sentient”—that engineer at Google (probably!)
  • “Algorithms don’t listen, nor do they bend”—Cathy O’Neil
  • “We’re fascinated with robots because they are reflections of ourselves.”—Ken Goldberg

Hiddens